


wish the world was flat just like the old days

by gyzym



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-09
Updated: 2012-03-09
Packaged: 2017-11-01 17:17:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gyzym/pseuds/gyzym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Originally written on tumblr [12/24/11]; the title, a line from the Death Cab for Cutie song "The New Year," served as the prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wish the world was flat just like the old days

The first New Year’s Day after the apocalypse that wasn’t dawns grey and bleak, but at least it dawns. Crowley drinks champagne that won’t be pressed for thirty years and listens to nothing; the silence is a construct, but then again, there’s not much that isn’t, these days. 

“You’re getting maudlin again, dear boy,” Aziraphale says, voice crisp and clear over the ansaphone Crowley can’t quite bring himself to burn. “It’s hardly becoming.” 

“Becoming  _what_ ,” Crowley spits later, lip to lip with an old acquaintance never quite forgot, edges of his tongue lit alive like the flaming sword Aziraphale will always be. “Pray tell, Angel, what we are  _becoming_.” 

“There’s that word again.” 

“Becoming?” 

“ _Pray._ ”

—

Human beings, predictable, place an ending on the year like they do on everything else. 

“Mortality-obsessed little things, aren’t they,” Crowley says, unable to stop drawing out his sibilants, appendages still foreign, warm blood still running cold. 

“Wouldn’t you be?” says Aziraphale. “I think it’s rather sweet, really. Celebration of the new, and all that.” 

“When have you ever celebrated the new?” Crowley says, and Aziraphale lowers his lashes, smiles like he’s something dangerous. 

It’s an answer, of sorts. Crowley stops asking questions. 

—

He sleeps the fourteenth century, comes to on the first day of 1400 to find the remains of the Black Death, a war that didn’t manage to wake him. Aziraphale is where he always is—which is to say,  _everywhere_ —but Crowley finds his physical form huddled under a blanket in a back alley, unkempt for the first time in history. 

“Ah, Crowley,” he says. “Pestilence says hello.”

“Death too, I’d imagine,” says Crowley, offering Aziraphale his hand. “Or ‘goodbye,’ I suppose. New body?” 

“Not particularly,” says Aziraphale. “You slept rather longer than I would have liked.” 

 _I can see that_ , Crowley thinks, doesn’t say; Aziraphale’s always been the type to know when he’s gone off the rails. “You could have woken me.” 

“I did,” Aziraphale says, voice low, very nearly frightened.

Crowley takes him by the shoulder, hauls him up.

—

By the third time the apocalypse doesn’t quite manage to come, the romance of it is gone; by the time it actually takes, there’ve been twelve false starts and one false finish, and it’s predictable, dismissive. Crowley sprawls across the hood of his Bentley and cards his fingers through Aziraphale’s hair, eyes fixed upon the blue-black sky. He hasn’t had anything to drink, but he’s drunk anyway. Ineffability is funny that way. 

“I imagine War’s about,” Aziraphale says, after some time. “First of the year; she always did like an entrance.” 

“Is it the first?” says Crowley. “Suppose it must be. Feels like the first.” 

“So it does,” says Aziraphale. “How long has it been, d’you think?” 

The sky shifts, restless; a hundred thousand years and here they are, the last vestiges of the humanity they never quite mastered, Crowley’s fingers in Aziraphale’s hair. 

“Long enough, I imagine,” Crowley says, and Aziraphale sighs, turns to face him, braces them both for a fall. 


End file.
